The communications industry is rapidly changing to adjust to emerging technologies and ever increasing customer demand. This customer demand for new applications and increased performance of existing applications is driving communications network and system providers to employ networks and systems having greater speed and capacity (e.g., greater bandwidth). In trying to achieve these goals, a common approach taken by many communications providers is to use packet switching technology. Deterministic networks rely on a set of predetermined time slots, which define at least a time (and possibly frequency to use especially in a wireless deterministic network), when each specific node can communicate a packet to a second specific node in the deterministic network.